Reforming the reform

In my recent piece
about the challenges facing the Sangamon County Citizens Efficiency Commission,
I noted that the adoption of township government in the 1850s, which has been intended to enhance local government,
today only confuses it. The glut of small, single-purpose government entities
in Illinois also was a consequence of a good-government cost-cutting mandate.
The 1870 Constitution limited how much local governments could borrow, the
better to constrain local officials’ impulse to folly; that limited the ability
of those governments to provide services as new needs were identified. For
example, a municipal government in need of parks but up against its bonded debt
limit could, as Springfield did, create a separate district able to borrow the
money needed to build the parks instead.